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Next On Obama Administration Chicago-Style Hit List: Arizona

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Based on details outlined in Jake Tapper’s blog, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey lays out another example of Obama administration Chicago-style relationship building today.  It seems that Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, noticing how well the first one – now being touted as really being designed to help us out NEXT year, you silly people – has worked out, dared to question the necessity of a second stimulus package.

“…the reality is it hasn’t helped yet. Only about 6.8 percent of the money has actually been spent. What I proposed is, after you complete the contracts that are already committed, the things that are in the pipeline, stop it.”

But in this strange, new land of “I won”, common sense is no longer allowed.  Nor is telling the Obama administration to stop anything.  The Arizona governor promptly received a few snarky letters:

“…from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood,  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar all pointing out the billions headed to Arizona.

“Kyl ‘publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren’t presently underway,’ LaHood wrote to Brewer, a Republican. ‘I believe the stimulus has been very effective in creating job opportunities throughout the country. However, if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.'”

And there you have the perspective of America held by Obama and his administration.  The royal “we” are making money available but if you don’t want it, they won’t send it to you. 

How quickly the royal “we” has forgotten that the money they are “making available” belongs to the people of Arizona and the rest of the people of the United States in the first place.  They feel they can threaten to keep YOUR money from you.  Kyle and Senator John McCain didn’t hesitate to remind them and call them out on their blatant political games:

“We were very disappointed to learn of the letters that you and other members of the Cabinet sent to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer about stimulus spending and that you would allow your good offices to be used so obviously for political purposes.

“Secretary LaHood’s suggestion that the Administration will “make available” to Arizonans tax dollars that they pay is patently offensive.

“We hope this does not characterize your dealings with the Congress in the future.”

Dr. Phil is fond of saying that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  We’re not alone here in noting how many times President Obama or those in his administration resort to threats when confronted with common sense or the Constitution so I’m afraid Kyle and McCain, indeed the entire country, are going to be pretty disappointed.

Senator Kyl said:

“It’s unfortunate that President Obama and his administration seem unwilling to debate the merits of the stimulus bill and acknowledge its shortcomings.  Instead, they have resorted to coordinated political attacks with the Democratic National Committee and the politicization of departments of government by using cabinet secretaries to issue thinly veiled threats to the Governor and the people of Arizona.  Since even the President acknowledges the stimulus isn’t working as well as he hoped, the administration should instead be willing to consider whether the unallocated stimulus money could be put to better use.”

Unfortunate, indeed.  But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the teleprompter to tell me things are going to change any time soon.

A Blank Teleprompter While Iranian Citizens Die

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As they work to stifle American freedoms through “progressive” legislation like EFCA and nationalized health care, the hypocritical U.S. Congress decided to pass  resolutions to make themselves look knowledgeable and concerned about election protests currently going on in Iran.  Almost perversely wanting to be seen as upholders of democracy, the voice of the people, and free speech, near-unanimously they condemned the Iranian government’s violence against citizen protesters. 

Ron Paul was the lone dissenting voice in the Senate, and there is certainly validity in his reasoning.  Our Founders cautioned, from the start, that we must not stick our nose where it doesn’t belong.  Particularly when we stick it into a place where a hand waits patiently, wielding a razor-sharp, double-edged sword, just itching to cut it off.

But what is happening in Iran today is not the stuff of which simple meddling is made.  What is happening is unequivocably serious, and of concern here is the reaction of the White House. 

“Deeply troubled.”

“Wait and see.”

About a “…vigorous debate….”

There is nothing in the way of “debate” when the only vigor is found in the slaughter of unarmed citizens who raise their voices in protest of their government’s actions.  (Any further questions on why it is so important we protect our 2nd Amendment rights here in America?)  But his hands-in-pockets, whistling-in-the-dark, minimizing stance can be Obama’s only way, for the truth is that when it comes to the real world he has no experience from which to calculate a move or to assess the feasibility of any recommendation of a move, whether concerning matters foreign or domestic.  Some claim he is simply keeping a cool head, and in one respect this may be true, for an Iranian revolution that ultimately overthrows the religious leaders at its helm and the resulting restructuring of the Middle East as we know it, perhaps accompanied by a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel, as well as perhaps also sucking in a spin-off confrontation between India and Pakistan, with North Korea taking advantage of the ensuing chaos to throw in its nuclear gauntlet for good measure, is exactly what Obama needs to bring the U.S. economy out of the depression he has designed.  He’s dug his tentacles into the auto industry (remember their work during WWII?) and he is doing his damndest to control the banks.  Should the worst come to pass he will gear up the American War Machine for the benefit of…exactly who?  For…exactly what?

With his silent and therefore tacit agreement of Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khamenei, it is not for democracy and certainly not for the benefit of America.  At least not for the America that was birthed through its own revolution some 200-odd years ago.  To find a means to go to what Obama’s mask of delicate, spread-the-wealth sensibilities can justify as a legitimate war seems to be the hidden agenda behind the acceleration of his wholesale slaughter of the American economy and his continued wide-eyed toadying to the dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world; in 180-degree contrast to the way he belittles and snubs our ally, Israel.  For it is another world war that will allow Obama to raise his voice in its most soaring, fear-mongering rhetoric and so create an atmosphere that will accept, even (wrongfully) encourage his signing “emergency” executive orders to strip away our rights (guns, free speech, presidential term limits) under the guise of “national security”. 

And in the end, subject us not only to his secret ambition of being a messiah, but also a king.  A king who no longer must bow to his elders but instead may meet his Middle Eastern counterparts on the madman’s perception of equal ground.

The Only Explanation Is Madness

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Like the paycheck of most hard-working, tax paying Americans these days, my leisure time (read:  writing time) seems to be shrinking equally fast.  But being busy doesn’t mean I’ve not been paying attention to what is going on, and, of course, what is going on remains wickedly troubling.

President Obama and the Democratic Congressional majority are pushing forward untenable changes at an unprecedented pace and every day it becomes more and more clear to me that nothing good is going to come out the other end.  How can it when such sweeping “change” comes at the expense of the law, as demonstrated in both the Chrysler bankruptcy and the recent firing of Inspector General Walpin for having the audacity to actually audit – and document the fraudulent use of taxpayer money – one of Obama’s friends?  And it seems to me as if every time Obama opens his mouth, Kim Jong-il shows the world his opinion of our dialogue-mongering President and belligerently fires another missile; but with American journalists in the custody of North Korea, we are hard-pressed to negotiate with the madman at the helm.

But at which side of the table does the real madman sit?  Interestingly, I came across an article that discussed whether Obama is, himself, also a madman. 

Listen to him. He’s talking in what seems to be a glossolalic deluge of issues. One plan a week, each thrown out there while we’re still digesting the previous one. He’s moving too fast for us to keep up with him. He’s talking a private language, to himself, like crazy people do, because he certainly can’t be talking to us, his strange, atrophied people, our capacity for large projects and great achievement, let alone for the participation in enlightened self-government that such projects and achievements require, something safely kept reserved for HBO historical miniseries. The muscles have gone slack, the nerve endings gone dead. He’s talking about phantoms, about ghosts, about things that aren’t really there. He’s speaking in tongues is what he’s doing.

When you consider this perspective alongside Obama’s never-ending obsession with calling out those who don’t agree with him and his deliberate lack of transparency about things that matter, it seems as if perhaps someone has finally come out and stated the truth.  To be sure, Barack Hussein Obama is no ordinary politician, let alone an ordinary American.  A product of progressive liberalism before such a thing became popular, let alone mainstream, and raised among those who would turn America inside-out in pursuit of some deeply bitter and misguided sense of “justice”, even on the best of days Obama exhibits a decided lack of maturity.  Rather like Peter Pan, he flits back and forth between the real world and Never-Never Land; deliberately unwilling to grow up but intrigued by the idea just the same.  He may be master of the teleprompter and a master of self-control, but even the best of armor has cracks and it is through those cracks we may glimpse his rage at being unable to settle down on one side or the other.

Whether his rage is the source of what could be termed his functional insanity or is merely a symptom of it is moot.  For regardless why it exists, that it exists at all it makes him a dangerous man.  As dangerous as the Islamic extremists who target America with, frankly, more than a little similarity of intent.

An Example Of Empathy?

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It was just a little news blurb tonight, one of those “fluff” fillers intended to make us feel all warm and fuzzy.

The President took his wife on a promised “date night” to New York City tonight.  Dinner at a swanky restaurant and then a Broadway show; nothing different than what millions of husbands do for their wives every weekend.  Or used to do, anyway.

But those other millions of husbands aren’t preaching to everyone else that “climate change” is a Big Serious Matter and then turning around and leaving yet another big carbon footprint just for fun.  Those millions of other husbands aren’t preaching fiscal responsibility and then going off to have that fun on someone else’s dime.

Words mean something all right.

And the word that comes to mind is:  hypocrite.

Obama Tells New Yorker To Not Run In 2010 Senate Race

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President Obama’s Chicago-based political training has not only raised eyebrows, but also the hackles of even his lapdog Democrats when it was reported that he personally telephoned New York State Democratic Senator Steve Israel to tell him to stand down on challenging governor-appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in next year’s Senatorial race.

This was done at the behest of Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), in order to “clear the field” for Gillibrand’s run in 2010. 

Does this controversial junior Senator have naked pictures in her desk drawer or does the administration feels she’s the more maleable choice in what is shaping up to be an extremely ugly midterm election cycle?

No matter what, this is uncalled for and completely out of line.  Chicago back-room politics have no business being used anywhere else.  Not only President Obama, but Senators Schumer and Menendez deserve nothing but the boot from Washington for such blatant mockery of our election process.

Obama’s Economic Waffles

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On the breakfast menu this morning:  waffles.

President Obama’s remarks yesterday at a Rio Rancho, New Mexico townhall meeting about credit card reform:

“I just want to make a little commentary about the media here, if you don’t mind.  When Congress included in last year’s budget a whole bunch of earmarks, you remember there was a week worth of stories about how terrible these earmarks were,” the president recounted. “You remember this…a week’s worth of stories: ‘Oh, these earmarks, this is what’s blowing up the deficit, this is terrible,’ blah, blah, blah.  And yet, as I said before, that was less than 1 percent of that entire budget that had been signed.  When we find $17 billion worth of cuts in programs, what do the same folks say?  They say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing.’…That’s not significant.  That’s not important.’

“Well, you can’t have it both ways.  If those earmarks were important, then this money is important, too.”

President Obama’s remarks in March upon signing the pork-filled 2009 Omnibus spending bill (with roughly 9,000 earmarks totaling nearly $8 billion):

“I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it is necessary for the ongoing functions of government. But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change.”

President Obama’s remarks during the 3rd presidential debate in Hempstead, New York:

“Now, Senator McCain talks a lot about earmarks.  That’s one of the centerpieces of his campaign. Earmarks account for 0.5 percent of the total federal budget. There’s no doubt that the system needs reform and there are a lot of screwy things that we end up spending money on, and they need to be eliminated. But it’s not going to solve the problem. ”

President Obama’s remarks about his $3.5 trillion budget proposal:

“The 121 budget cuts we are announcing today will save taxpayers nearly $17 billion next year alone.  And even by Washington standards, that should be considered real money.”

A comment about President Obama’s $3.5 trillion budget proposal by an administration official:

“$17 billion dollars, I think, to anyone’s accounting, is a significant amount of money. Again, that’s in one year alone.” 

It makes sense that Obama keeps the emphasis on the red herring of just what constitutes “significant” and “important”.  Because if people understood what is behind the number, they’d see that all this talk of “change” continues to be nothing more than keeping the country on the same, well-worn and dangerous path we’ve been on for years.

As the Wall Street Journal points out:

The added cost of new programs detailed in Mr. Obama’s budget appendix will swamp the $17 billion of potential savings anticipated from eliminating or cutting back 121 programs, enumerated in a separate document.

The White House on Monday will release a revised deficit projection to take into account technical and economic changes that will almost certainly widen its February forecasts of a record deficit of $1.8 trillion for fiscal 2009, and $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that begins in October.

Even if the president could eliminate the entire defense budget, along with domestic discretionary programs in 2009, the $1.3 trillion of savings would still leave a $445 billion budget deficit. 

Well, President Obama, if we can’t “have it both ways”, then neither can you.  And, by the way, yes, I DO mind your little ongoing commentaries about the media.  It is your job to uphold the Constitution and it is the media’s job to report on how you do or do not do it.  If you don’t like the fact your progressivism and your lying results in criticism,  you’ve no one to blame but yourself.

Pass the syrup, please.

In Plain English: Obama Is Incompetent

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Just over half the Americans eligible to vote and who chose to do so (well, at least it was presumed that all votes cast were by those who were both living and eligible – some even 77 times eligible – since there were numerous charges and indictments against Obama-campaign-funded ACORN) went to Barack Hussein Obama and in a flash we ushered in what continues to be called a new era of “hope and change”.

The problem is that the hope is now that this man resigns or otherwise disappears and that the change we’ve seen has been nothing but negative.

But I fear that Obama’s audacity (read:  ego) and the fact that too many in this country, including the First Lady, are still willing to covertly or overtly play the race card is going to keep us sliding down the thinly-veiled razor blade he proffered, too many accepted, and for which he continues to campaign.  And that is a sadness even more tragic than the economic meltdown that has the real middle class of this country wondering just how they’re going to manage to survive.

Let us consider for a moment the definition of the word “incompetent”.  There are those claim only worm-eaters make any criticisms of President Obama, but do they really understand what it means?  Merriam-Webster defines it thusly:

Main Entry:   incompetent 
Function:   adjective
Etymology:   Middle French incompétent, from in- + compétent competent
Date:   1595
1: not legally qualified
2: inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose
3 a: lacking the qualities needed for effective action b: unable to function properly
 
Arguments continue to be made that Barack Obama is not legally qualified to hold the office of President of the United States, based on questions about the circumstances surrounding his birth.  While the courts continue to refuse to hear cases on this, that the President continues to allow the question to be asked is at direct odds with all his calls for honesty and transparency.  Like the old saying goes, “He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing.”  Surely it would be a simple matter to allow the release of records and thereby properly refute claims by his family of a Kenyan birth to a mother not old enough to confer U.S. citizenship upon him.  His college records remain protected as well, which again gives, at best, yet another appearance of impropriety.  Like the best of cases made up purely of circumstantial evidence, something both his Harvard law degree and his $800,000 worth of lawyers fighting to keep all his records sealed surely must know, many people have a hard time believing the answer would be something as simple as he doesn’t want anyone to know his grades in school were even worse than those of our much-ridiculed former President George W. Bush.
 
That President Obama is inadequate in his role as President has become a matter of daily course.  While both Hugo Chavez and the Ayatollah Khomeini aren’t exactly leading anyone’s list of reputable advisors, that they have both come out in the last week to blatantly blast Obama with both barrels in derision of his policies and his lack of concrete “change” speaks to the low level of regard with which the United States is now held.  And that is a dangerous place for us to be, yet President Obama continues to attempt to soothe the savage beasts with lullabies of cooperation and dialogue while treating our allies with casual disregard and in some instances outright disrespect.  As if it never occurs to him that no matter what America says or what America does, there are some people in this world who wish for nothing less than America to disappear off the face of the Earth.  
  
Further inadequacy is demonstrated in his insistance – despite rumblings from Europe that the dollar should no longer be taken seriously – that taking trillions and trillions from zero will somehow magically transform the raging rivers of federal red ink into a viable and stable national budget.  
  
The qualities required for a President to be effective are not consistent with the actions of Barack Obama.  He shows more concern about winning a game of oneupmanship with people like Rush Limbaugh and doing late-night comedy with Jay Leno (a trip paid for by the taxpayers) than properly addressing, say, the economy.   Effective leaders care enough to know the facts at hand and are able to speak intelligently most of the time without the aid of a teleprompter.  Functioning properly in the role of President is not resorting to “gallows humor” when asked legitimate questions; indeed, these never-ending media appearances only serve to show that President Obama lacks the maturity required to lead the United States.  He shows the world that he is more enamored with the color of authority and privilege he perceives his role confers upon him than he is with the grave responsibilities it brings.  This immature perspective is reinforced by alleging to have been “blindsided” by the AIG bonuses.  I don’t know very many people who find out what it was they did at work by watching the evening news, do you?  Oh, but I forgot.  When he was to have been serving as a Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was out campaigning instead of working to represent those who had elected him so apparently couldn’t be bothered to know just what he was voting for or what his colleagues were doing.  Along the same lines he couldn’t be bothered to read the stimulus bill.  The applause of the crowds apparently meant more to him – and still does – than actually doing real work.
  
President G.W. Bush may not have been the brightest bulb in the drawer and though his business ventures were all failures, at least he had legitimate experience from which to draw when he was elected.  Including military experience, such as it was.  Barack Obama cannot make the same claim.  Since coming of legal age he has done nothing of real value, he has never gotten his hands dirty doing what anyone might recognize as a regular job.  He is the stuff of debates and models and multi-layered theories, of myths and fantasies that have never known the hard knocks from application in the real world.  Yet he feels entitled to sit in the Oval Office and to make a mockery of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and with the stroke of several pens – because of course it’s all about creating historic souvenirs – destroy the free market.
  
It is no longer a case where the silly Emperor has no clothes on.  It is that the Emperor is, whether naked or clothed, dangerously incompetent.

We’re Aren’t As Stupid As You Think, Mr. President

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In his Saturday message, President Obama said that the people who attended his townhall meetings in California this week “weren’t as concerned about the news of the day in Washington as they were about the very real and serious challenges their families face every day”.

Perhaps he was following Nancy Pelosi’s lead and addressing illegal immigrants who don’t speak English well or at all, or perhaps it is merely testament to the depth of the financial mess in California, created in part by taking care of all those illegal immigrants, but the “ordinary Americans” with whom I speak on a daily basis are extremely concerned about what’s going on in Washington.  They watch the spiraling debt, the dropping Dow, past and future generations of good money being thrown after bad; they watch those who should be most concerned about the mess they have created spending their time lobbing self-perceived pithy comments at radio hosts and television commentators or making hurtful jokes, and alternately shake their heads in amazement or shudder in revulsion.

The “ordinary Americans” with whom I speak on a daily basis know full well that what goes on in Washington holds grave ramifications for not only this, our beloved country, but for them, as individuals.  They understand that it is impossible to spend money that you don’t have to pay off debts you don’t need to incur, they understand that government involvement in private business is socialism, they understand that hamstringing those who own companies by ever-increasing taxes on their incomes and unionizing their businesses spells death to free enterprise, personal choice, and everything upon which this country was founded.  They understand that our sovereignty is threatened by the President’s enchantment with the U.N., and that our safety is threatened by a foreign policy that even – shamefully – the Ayatollah Khamenei rightly derides, saying, “They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven’t seen any change.”

Yet President Obama continues to dare to carry on campaigning about fixing the “fiscal mess” he and the Congress critters inheirited – from themselves.  He expects to send the deficit to some $9.3 trillion in 10 years yet cut it in half in what he euphamistically now refers to as his “first term”.

We, the “ordinary Americans”, watch and we listen, and then we, the “ordinary Americans”, hope and we pray that the gods help us all and give us the time we need to vote this kind of audacity out with a thorough house cleaning in Washington.